


23 Years Drabbles

by xpityx



Series: 23 Years Verse [2]
Category: NCIS
Genre: M/M, Past Gibbs/Shannon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-12 19:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4491669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A relationship, in parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Rose

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably make more sense if you've read [ 23 Years, 4 Months, 2 Weeks, 6 Days ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4454642), but I imagine it'd be OK if you haven't.
> 
> Please note that I haven't used archive warnings - feel free to message me over on Tumblr (periodicstructure) if you're worried at all.
> 
> Beta'd by the lovely [AmyH](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/491141/).
> 
> Finally, thank you to everyone who was kind enough to leave comments and kudos on "23 Years..." - I really enjoyed writing it and I'm so pleased that people seemed to have enjoyed reading it as well ^^

 

"So, where we going Gibbs?"

 

"We're going to a movie and after that we're going to have dinner."

 

"Is this a date?"

 

"Yup."

 

"But you didn't get me flowers."

 

"Do you want flowers Tony?"

 

Gibbs veers across three lanes of traffic to their exit, and Tony's smile turns into a grimace.

 

"To be honest, I'd just like to live through the next ten minutes."

 

Gibbs grins.

 

 

-✽-

 

 

A week later, Tony awakens to find Gibbs is up already and that there's a single red rose on the pillow next to him.

 

Tony doesn't really know how to deal with either ~~~~the gesture or how it makes him feel, so he puts it into his overnight bag and goes down to see if there's coffee.

 

He randomly kisses Gibbs 18 times in the next four hours, but neither of them mention the rose.

 

 

-✽-

 

 

Tony gets home the next day and presses the rose between two men's fashion magazines.

 

 

-✽-

 

 

Eight months later, Gibbs is rearranging Tony's books in the spare room in an attempt to find places for the tower of them that usually live next to his bed. Tony had tripped over them for the third time in as many days and was threatening to talk about movies during sex unless Gibbs did something about them.

 

He finds the rose inside a book on criminal psychology Gibbs had bought for Tony last month.

 

Gibbs doesn't say anything about it, but later that evening he tells Tony that he loves him for the first time.

 

 

-✽-

 

 

Two days after Tony's death, Abby is looking for something of Gibbs's to bury him with when she comes across the rose. It's in a box with various birthday and Christmas cards and the odd note.

 

McGee would've put the lid back on and put the box away, not wanting to look at something he felt he wasn't a part of, but they put McGee in the ground six years ago and Abby knows that love can't be tarnished: it doesn't fade in the sharing of it. So she sits and reads the cards and notes, and cries because she loved these two men and here, despite how bad they were with words, she can feel how much they loved each other, and she's comforted by that knowledge.

 

 

-✽-

 

 

She puts the rose in Tony's coffin when it's her turn to say goodbye.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone has any requests then please let me know. I can't promise anything, but I can probably write something about most people in this 'verse - what happens to them, how they react to Tony and Gibbs's relationship etc.


	2. Ziva

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is tiny, so will post another one tomorrow. Thanks as always to [AmyH](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/491141/) for the beta.

 

Ziva teaches a young teenager French at a dining table in a long cool room, patio doors open to the evening sun. She is patient, correcting the girl’s pronunciation and tucking her al-amira behind her shoulder where it falls onto the book of poetry they share.

  


“La fleur tombe en livrant ses parfums au zéphyr.”

  


Later she eats musakhan. The sumac and olive oil leaves reddish streaks on her fingers and pine nuts fall to the floor beneath her chair. She doesn’t worry about the mess - a girl named Ayala comes and sweeps the floors each morning before school.

  


Ziva is slow as she walks up the stairs to her bedroom, but she is proud that she needs no aid to do so. She knows Gibbs had used a stick in later life - he never told her, of course, but she had seen from the way he held himself during their occasional vids that he had needed it. She has no doubt that Tony had sweet-talked his stubborn husband into actually using one. She smiles at the thought.

 

She will vid Abby tomorrow, she decides, they will laugh about old times and Ziva will remind her that she has promised to send her some American sweets.

 

Her dreams are easy and untroubled in the gathering dusk.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L'automne de Alphonse de Lamartine  
> 'The flower falls and yields its perfume to the wind'


	3. The Second Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sad.

 

 

Gibbs isn’t given to flights of fancy - he remembers fragments of poetry from high school English, the smell of sweat in the humid classroom as a teacher read to a half-asleep class, _in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me_ \- but he still feels helpless in the face of having to express himself in words.

 

He has been staring at a blank piece of paper for twenty-five minutes and he still doesn’t know what to write.

 

He sighs, gets up and goes to make himself another coffee.

 

\---

 

There's a rose on Gibbs's pillow.

 

Tony smiles in bemusement, thinking instantly of the one he'd been given over a year before - he still has it somewhere.

 

He raises himself up on an elbow, and then sees that there's also a gold ring and a folded note.

 

As both a cop and an NCIS agent he's been shot at and blown up, poisoned and stabbed, but the sight of a plain golden band of metal is nearly his undoing.

 

He closes his eyes for a second before reaching for the note: in Gibbs's strong, distinctive penmanship is a single question mark.

 

He makes a sound he thinks is halfway between a sob and a laugh.

 

\---

 

Tony doesn’t answer, not in words anyway. He puts the ring on, which fits perfectly of course, and goes down to the kitchen. His fiancé stands in front of the coffee machine, his back stiff with tension.

 

Tony sits, pours himself some cereal and watches Gibbs from under his lashes. When Gibbs eventually turns, his eyes go straight to Tony's left hand that he has conveniently placed in full view. Tony can feel himself smile and his eyes start to burn, even as he tries to keep his cool. Gibbs half smiles and then swallows hard before looking down, obviously fighting for control. They give each other a second and then Gibbs sits opposite him at the table and clears his throat.

 

"Can you pass the milk?"

 

Tony finally looks up and catches his eye.

 

A magpie, sitting on the deck outside, startles upwards at an explosion of laughter and flies off into the early morning light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by e. e. cummings  
> in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me


	4. Tim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neither Tony or Gibbs are harmed in this chapter, but I'm warning for sad. Also, some bi-erasure, homo/queerphobia and one misogynistic slur... not as bad as it sounds, honest. This is the first time I've ever tried to embed a picture in my fic, so let's see how well that goes (if you don't see an image at the end, that means I fucked up).

 

He sits in his local Starbucks, his back to the wall. He had tried going home, but his apartment always looks strange, almost alien, after being kidnapped. It should probably worry him that he has enough experience with kidnapping to know that.

 

 _Tony and Gibbs_ , Tim thinks, _Tony and Gibbs having sex_. He cringes - OK, maybe that was a bridge too far.

 

If you’d have asked him yesterday if he’d have a problem with one of his co-workers being gay then his reply would’ve been, ‘no, of course not’, but he’s finding the reality of the situation a little hard to get his head around. It was just that it’s _Gibbs_. He’d been married four times! To women! And, well, he just didn’t seem the type - he was so masculine.

 

Tim frowns at the thought. He doesn’t really mean that. He knows that gay people are just people, and they don’t fit into neat little stereotypes, but he’s finding it difficult to take Gibbs out of the box he's apparently put him in, one marked ‘definitely heterosexual’.

 

Somehow, the fact that Tony likes designer clothes and has a pedicure once a month makes it easier to accept that he is now in a relationship with a man.

 

Tim shakes his head at himself - inadvertently causing an elderly women to decide against sitting next to him - he’d thought he was better than this.

 

\---

 

The Washington Law Against Discrimination was originally passed in 1949, and updated to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in 2006. The fact that Tim knows this would indicate that perhaps the powers that be at NCIS also know this, but he has yet to see any evidence of it. He can’t count the number of times he’s heard the words ‘fag’ and ‘pussy’ being tossed around the locker room.

 

Tony had gotten drunk enough once to tell him about an openly gay police officer who he had worked with.  When word got round that his partner was sick, his co-workers had hung posters of Tommy Morrison* on his locker.

 

He knows there’s a difference between this and ten years ago, when people got away with ignoring calls for backup, but he still worries. Tony has been leading his own team for nearly three years now and, not that he’d ever tell him to his face, he makes a damn fine Supervisory Special Agent. His two team members, Yamila Terrazas and Jacob Moore are friends as well as colleagues, but he can’t help but look at them sometimes and wonder, _if you knew, would you still come running?_

 

\---

 

The first time Tim holds his baby daughter, he gets it. Like, _really, really_ gets it. He thinks of the cases he’s worked, of murdered and abused kids, of kidnappings and grief, and he knows with absolute clarity that he would kill anyone who so much as looked at his child askance.

 

He knows he that he’ll love her if she dyes her hair pink and tattoos her face; if she decides to be an astronaut or a line cook; if she falls in love with a girl, or a boy and a girl or someone who’s neither, or no one at all.

  
\---

 

 

  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *a heavyweight boxing champion (appeared in one of the Rocky movies) who died of AIDS.


	5. Golden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sad!

 

 

He doesn't like to think about it, or rather, he’s afraid to. He fears he'll reach for the memory one day and it won’t be there. He knows what it is to forget and it's become one of the many things that keep him awake at 4am.

 

The memory itself hasn't faded so much as it's become sun-bleached - the light from the floor-length windows in the restaurant bathed everything it touched and limns his recollection in gold. He can't believe they'd ever been so young.

 

The restaurant itself isn't there anymore, but it was just enough out of his price range to add to his nerves. He’d knelt, wanting to do it right for Shannon. She’d looked at him and smiled, as other diners had stopped their conversation to watch the drama unfold. He’d been able to open the box but found himself fumbling for the words, cursing himself as a stupid lump of a man. Shannon leant down, her hair forming a curtain against the stares, and said, "get up you silly man" love and understanding in every syllable.

 

He knew each and every time he’d gotten down on one knee after that, it was a mistake. He looked up each time and for just a moment he expected to see Shannon, sitting in sunlight and smiling softly at him.

 

He knows that if he'd spoken about it, if he'd explained to the women in his life why there were some things he couldn’t bear to do then he's sure that at least one or two would've understood. But he could never find the words, and he found himself resenting them for not just _knowing_ , the way Tony seems to just know.

 

“Can I help you, sir?”

 

Gibbs comes back to the present.

 

“I’ll take two of the beveled 8mm in 18 karat yellow gold, one size nine and one size nine and three quarters.”

 

“Of course, sir, right away. Would you like those engraved, sir?”

 

Gibbs hesitates - he’s never been good with words - then nods, decisively, “Yes, thank you.”

 

Well, if Tony has taught him anything it’s that it’s never too late to start trying.

 

 


End file.
